It confounds that a contemporary society of film makers and actors should find the topic of dystopian love in all-white uniforms so fascinating yet are unable to create an original and creative manner to convey the story. Drake Doremus' Equals features Silas (Nicholas Hoult) and Nia (Kirsten Stewart) as the Romeo and Juliet of a post-Big War survivor social community of dullards whose existence is reduced to monosyllabic verbiage, right-angle utilitarian architecture, and conformist socialism. Breeding out sex as emotional savagery, any expression of normative human emotions has been turned into a social disease (SOS) that all are warned to be on alert to symptoms, take medical precautions and medications, and avoid contaminated persons as suspicious. That a society which found the cure for the common cold and cancer should be so adverse to color, racial diversity, and human sexuality becomes an inane setting for this story of repressive love in the bleach rinse.
Doremus vision is monochromatic and seems to drag on long past the obvious markers of inevitable storytelling. It was suggested that this film should have been a short, and an edit would have moved the action to its resolution with satisfaction. There is no mystery or even suspension of disbelief that can be sustained for the hour and half of this film's tale. Actors Hoult and Stewart find love on the public rest room floor of their work place, yet, the sterile nature of the sets make it seem less egregious than a romp in the sheets or shower. Hoult manages to convey the agitation of a lover whose partner conceals their shared love, and when she is discovered, conveys the anxiety of her forced incarceration for rehabilitation and ultimate fatal cure. It is more his film than Stewart, a relief as the format suits her non-emotive face. Silas is the emotional one not Nia, who is a hider of her contaminated SOS state.
Oddly, the society in which the characters inhabit is without personal communication devices forcing them to speak face to face rather than text, email, or use old fashion land-line phones. If society's goal is to render emotionless the interaction between persons, it missed the boat. Everyone speaks to one another, gathers together, and works in teams, the social interaction is pervasive. Minimally entertaining and satisfying, Equals misses with the exception of encouraging a desire to run naked through the woods leaping and shouting with joyful noise.
Doremus vision is monochromatic and seems to drag on long past the obvious markers of inevitable storytelling. It was suggested that this film should have been a short, and an edit would have moved the action to its resolution with satisfaction. There is no mystery or even suspension of disbelief that can be sustained for the hour and half of this film's tale. Actors Hoult and Stewart find love on the public rest room floor of their work place, yet, the sterile nature of the sets make it seem less egregious than a romp in the sheets or shower. Hoult manages to convey the agitation of a lover whose partner conceals their shared love, and when she is discovered, conveys the anxiety of her forced incarceration for rehabilitation and ultimate fatal cure. It is more his film than Stewart, a relief as the format suits her non-emotive face. Silas is the emotional one not Nia, who is a hider of her contaminated SOS state.
Oddly, the society in which the characters inhabit is without personal communication devices forcing them to speak face to face rather than text, email, or use old fashion land-line phones. If society's goal is to render emotionless the interaction between persons, it missed the boat. Everyone speaks to one another, gathers together, and works in teams, the social interaction is pervasive. Minimally entertaining and satisfying, Equals misses with the exception of encouraging a desire to run naked through the woods leaping and shouting with joyful noise.